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Tweets aimed at engaging consumers in conversation make up 16% of marketers' Twitter posts, according to a report. The majority of tweets posted by marketers consist of general information or news content, researchers at 360i note. That lends itself to syndication and dissemination through retweets, but might undermine attempts at direct engagement with marketers' target consumers, the report finds.

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The relative value of retweets, likes and other network-specific social metrics isn't always straightforward, writes Doug Schumacher. That's where the fan-count-to-engagement ratio comes in: You can start to identify trends across networks by dividing the number of interactions with the number of posts made and the number of fans, Schumacher writes.

Tweets that contain hashtags are about 55% more likely to be retweeted than messages that don't contain tags, according to research by Dan Zarrella. Including quotes in tweets also helps to win retweets, although the effect was somewhat smaller, Zarrella writes.

Justin Bieber has become Twitter's most-followed user in part by engaging with followers through retweets and personal responses rather than tweeting only promotional messages about himself, writes Kim Lachance Shandrow. Noting that just over half of Bieber's tweets are retweets, she adds that his behavior in turn encourages followers to retweet him more often and spread his messages, she writes.

Social-media marketers should make the most of search-engine marketers' hard-won insights, writes Rob Birgfeld. The obvious place to start is by making sure you're using the right keywords in your social content. Marketers should also ensure that they're posting content at a time when people are online and receptive, and they should use search-style targeting to make sure they're reaching out to the right audience, he writes.

Getting retweets on Twitter isn't hard, Mack Collier says, as long as you understand that reciprocity rules. In addition to tweeting about his own blog posts, Collier takes care to RT blog posts by his followers that others might find interesting, which makes it far more likely they'll retweet his posts in the future.